marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

Chapter 8 – Marker-assisted selection in maize 139described in previous sections, cost-effectiveMAS requires several components of anintegrated infrastructure, some features ofwhich have had a relatively high rate of renovationand replacement (e.g. methods ofdetecting DNA polymorphism), and thereforerequired substantial financial resources.Competing corporations and the potentialfor profit provide the necessary motivationfor such investments (Troyer, 2004; Crosbieet al., 2006). To the authors’ knowledge,such financial mechanisms either do notexist or are limited in the public sector.Collaboration between the public andprivate sectors in MAS for maize may bestrongest in basic genetics and genomeannotation. In order for MAS to reachits full potential, it may be necessary toacquire a much better understandingof gene function and products. For anyplant species, only a small percentage ofgenes and other DNA sequences have afunction defined through direct experimentation(Lee, 2006). Discoveries in plantgene function will occur in many laboratoriesaround the world and, ultimately, thedevelopment groups in the private sectorwill have the necessary concentration ofresources and sense of purpose to assemblethe relatively raw basic information intotools and products from MAS. The maizenuclear genome, with tens of thousandsof genes and many other important DNAsequences, is mostly a “black box” withrespect to understanding the role of thesein mediating phenotypes in response toenvironmental cues. Such understanding, apotential key to MAS and maize improvement,can only occur through informal andformal collaboration between the publicand private sectors investigating a broadarray of plant species.Examples of collaborative researchbetween the public and private sectorsrelevant to MAS in maize include attemptsto select for hybrid yield (Stromberg,Dudley and Rufener, 1994), QTLmapping and selecting of hybrid yield(Eathington, Dudley and Rufener, 1997)and grain quality (Laurie et al., 2004), thedevelopment of the IBM population ofrecombinant inbred lines, and mappinggenomic regions that include the vgt1locus in maize (Lee et al., 2002; Salvi etal., 2002). National collaborative researchprogrammes such as Génoplante in Franceand GABI in Germany, as well as severalprojects within the European Commissionsponsoredframework programmes, areadditional examples of such collaboration.Certainly, other collaborative projectsbetween the public and private sectorshave been conducted in maize MAS buttheir proprietary nature prevents publicdisclosure.Future collaborative research activitiesin maize MAS could assume many forms.In most regions of the world, the privatesector has the obvious superiority in termsof infrastructure needed for genotyping,phenotyping and data analysis. Theseresources are mostly devoted to the directpursuit of products and profits. That pursuitmay also be the greatest disadvantage of theprivate sector because such a focus limitsthe attention devoted to many interestingyet seemingly ancillary observations ofgenotype-phenotype relations in MAS.Some components of that infrastructurecould possibly be made accessible to thepublic sector as “in-kind” contributionsto collaborative or service-related projectsin regions that are unlikely to emerge asimportant markets for the private sector orfor phenotypes and germplasm that are notof direct interest to the private sector.Education and training are alsoimportant areas in which the public and